U.S. plans permanent war;Americans can end it, saysKucinich in San Francisco

The administration plans lasting war — but citizens can organize to thwart its
plans. Dennis J. Kucinich expressed that view at “An urgent meeting of peace-makers” in San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday, October 19, 2014.

“Right now, our government is defining security in terms of perpetual war,” said
Kucinich, former eight-term, Ohio congressman. “A month ago in Washington, [official]
people were testifying, saying they expect us to be at war for another 20 to 30 years.”

America has drones all over the Middle East and has launched attacks in seven
Muslim countries, he said. “We know that this ‘War on Terror’ is a perpetual war, because
every place we wage that war, we’re creating more terrorism.” It’s in reaction to U.S.
attacks. “Bases all over the world and selling of arms all over the world” to opposing sides
help perpetuate the warfare, he added.

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost … between 4 and 6 trillion dollars….
Over a million innocent Iraqis perished as a result of a war based on lies.”

Remembering the ‘Great War’

Dennis Kucinich recalled the “sobering experience” of touring World War I battlegrounds in
Belgium recently, along with his wife, Elizabeth. A memorable sight was the Menin Gate at Ypres,
with names of some 55,000 fighters from British Commonwealth countries whose bodies were
never found. (See photo.)

One purpose of the San Francisco meeting on October 19, 2014, was to observe the centennial
of the World War that began in 1914 — soon to be called by many a “war to end all war” — and ask
questions: Why are we still fighting? How can we the people bring about peace?

The belief that defeating Germany would bring lasting peace stemmed from a short, 1914 book
by H. G. Wells titled The War That Will End War. That war killed about 10 million and wounded
about 20 million before ending in an armistice on Nov. 11, 1918.

As a new world war threatened, Wells gave up the idea of peace through war. In a novel, he
had a character say that the notion of ending war by waging war was like ending cannibalism by
eating cannibals

Most other wars before and after have been based on lies too, Kucinich said.

Held at the Women’s Building, on 18th Street, the meeting was sponsored by the
newly formed Bay Area Coalition Against Unconstitutional and Unlawful Wars,
comprising 18 regional organizations that challenge the legality of executive military
actions abroad. The War and Law League (WALL) had organized both the meeting and the
coalition. (The previous article here, “Kucinich to address peace groups …,” lists them.)

(Congress never voted to authorize war on Afghanistan in accord with the
Constitution, yet Bush Jr. and Obama have been bombing it for 13 years. Congress never
expressly voted to attack Iraq either. In 2002, in an act not countenanced by the
Constitution, it passed the buck to Bush Jr. to make that decision. No effort was made to
settle differences with either country peacefully in accord with U.S. treaty obligations.
Obama’s actions in Libya, Syria, and Iraq again have been purely executive.)

At home, Kucinich said, “the government is more involved in spying on people than
in being transparent about what it is doing with the power that we’ve given them.”
(President Obama came into office pledging the most transparent administration ever.)

Without mentioning a name or specific remedy, Kucinich condemned “those who
have abandoned our constitutional principles, who have abandoned the law, who have taken
up the practice of murder in other countries.” (Obama greatly expanded the use of drones,
employing them to kill both foreign people and Americans of his choice in lands abroad.)

But he told of a time when he stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and
challenged the executive war-making of President George W. Bush, reading proposed
articles of impeachment. And Kucinich, a Democrat, recalled that “it was the Democratic
leader at that time — who was a friend of mine but we disagreed mightily on this — who
said that impeachment was ‘off the table.’” (The leader then was Nancy Pelosi, U.S.
representative from San Francisco, who is running for a 15thterm as this is being written.)
It meant “that the Constitution was off the table … law enforcement was off the table …
justice for a million dead Iraqis was off the table … justice for 4,600 American troops who
died [in Iraq] … was off the table.

“We don’t have a spirit today of enforcing the law, except for people who are way
down on the economic ladder. But those who are at the top, they’re free; they work with
impunity, whether in government or in Wall Street.”

The San Francisco meeting was part of a national speaking tour by Kucinich, along
with his wife, Elizabeth, titled “Redefining National Security: From Terror to Peace.”

He said, “Let’s make the journey from 9/11 to 11/11.” On the latter date in 1918, World
War I ended.

Speaking without notes, he began by discussing the meaning of security and asking the audience
what it meant to them. Among many answers: peace; control of our own lives; having all
needs met; a living wage; constitutional protections; not having bases all over the world;
control of what we produce; everyone having what he wants; protection of the environment,
freedom from war. Just one man defined security in military terms: “If the U.S. is involved
abroad, it must be multinational, and countries in the region must take the lead.”

Attack on Syria called unlawful

The president’s attack on Syria was unconstitutional and a war crime, ex-Rep. Kucinich wrote
in Huffington Post, 9/23/14. (His talk in San Francisco was less specific.)

Congress did not authorize war in Syria, Kucinich pointed out. Article I, Section 8, of the
Constitution requires that any warfare first be authorized by Congress. What it did was release
funds to train “moderate” rebels. (The War Powers Resolution, Section 8 [a], says authority to send
forces into hostilities abroad shall not be inferred from any law — including an appropriations act
— unless it specifically authorizes such action.)

Furthermore, “This attack on Syria … is by definition, a war of aggression. It is a violation of
international law.” The president and his administration “must be held accountable by the
International Criminal Court and by the American people….”

Its aims: wresting “control of the oil from ISIS” and “stuffing the November ballot box with
bombs and missiles…. ” Voters would discover that Obama played into extremists’ hands, harmed
civilians, and plunged the U.S. deep into another Middle East War, Kucinich wrote. He would have
cut off the funds of ISIS and its revenue from oil sales, striking a deal with Syria and Iran.

He said ISIS gained its regional foothold through the funding and arming of its predecessors
by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan. Epitomizing the “bankruptcy” of Obama’s
foreign policy was “funding groups that turn on the U.S. again and again, a neo-con fueled cycle of
profits for war makers and destruction of ever-shifting ‘enemies.’ ”…

“One wonders if Saudi training of these moderate mercenaries will include methods of
beheading, which were popularized by the Saudi government long before their ISIS progeny took
up the grisly practice.”

Earlier he rebutted Defense Secretary Hagel’s denial that the new Iraq action was a “boots-on-the-ground kind of operation.” Kucinich found U.S. interventions “fueling insurgency.”

Reviving the peace movement

Kucinich remembered standing among more than a million people who massed in
New York’s Manhattan in February 2003 in opposition to George W. Bush’s planned war
in Iraq. There were “rallies in San Francisco … LA … Cleveland … Chicago. All across
America, people were saying no to war. The peace movement at that time was visible. Now
we have an opportunity to revivify that movement….”

He asked. “What can be done to restore the civic awareness, to renew the
consciousness of peace in this community and nationally?” People need not accept
conditions as they are; they can change it through their own power, by working with others,
he said. These were his experiences in Cleveland, Ohio:

I started in local government, the Cleveland City Council. There was a library closed. People
said, ‘You can’t do anything about it.’ I organized hundreds of people. It caused the library
board to back down. We saved the library.”

The city closed the fire station. For 125 days a couple of hundred people, most of them in their
seventies, sat in the fire station and dared the city to arrest them or remove them… People said
it was impossible to save the fire station, but they did….”

I was elected mayor on a promise to save the city’s electric system, which had already been
sold. My top advisers said, ‘Forget it. It’s already been done.’ I would not accept that. My first
act as mayor was to cancel the sale … [and] set off a battle with corporations…. We changed
the outcome….”

Cleveland’s steel mill, which created jobs for thousands of people, was suddenly shut down,
in some kind of banking deal in Europe ” When Kucinich said it would reopen, people laughed
and a press cartoon pictured him as Don Quixote. But it did reopen “by our intervention
legally, by massing the community together, by bringing in a new buyer, and by stopping them
from turning off the blast furnace….”

Prompted by Kucinich, members of the audience contributed their experiences and advice. An activist from Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco,
said, “We shut down many millions of dollars of projects brought in by Wall Street”
through speaking at public meeting and using initiative, recall, and Internet. Acting locally, the American people “could take back the country county by county.”

“What’s the first step if someone wants to do something in his community?”
Kucinich asked him.

“The first thing is to find three or four others who want to support each other. Show
up together. Speak at a microphone. I was a reclusive person. I learned to speak in a microphone in front of groups of people. For me, it took quite a bit of emotional
adaptation.” During the Vietnam protests, he was “beaten and tear-gassed and thrown in jail
by the police three times. We don’t have that motivation now…. We’ve got to get out and
get that motivation going.”

Kucinich remarked, “You said you were reclusive, but when you stood in front of
this group just now, I think everyone here felt your strength and your power.”

A Berkeley woman favored “direct action. You have to be visible. None of us has to
do this alone. When people are organizing, join them. Take a stand…. Let others know
what you’ve done. This is how things do change.” Another woman marched against war in
Iraq in 2003 and in Occupy Oakland, feeling less safe during the latter protests, owing to
the militarization of the police. Still another woman suggested getting more young people
involved.

Kucinich, from Washington, DC, said he would share ideas for successful activism
with groups throughout the country. Those seeking advice can make contact at
KucinichAction.com.

Peace actions in Congress

Issues of war and peace made up an important part of Dennis Kucinich’s agenda during 16 years in Congress as a representative from Ohio through 2012.

In 2001 he introduced a bill to form a cabinet-level Department of Peace, and he
reintroduced the legislation every two years. Among many provisions, it would have
mandated expert recommendations to the president on techniques of conflict resolution,
proactive involvement in international dialogues, and advance consultation with the
secretary of peace by the secretaries of state and defense prior to engagement of U.S. troops
abroad.

Representative Kucinich opposed Bush Junior’s Iraq invasion of 2003 and in 2007
announced a broad exit plan to bring the troops home and stabilize Iraq. In 2008 he
introduced impeachment articles against Bush for misleading the nation to war.

He also opposed measures hostile to Iran and advocated increased dialogue with
Iran. He advocated the abolition of all nuclear weapons. In 2003 he won the annual Gandhi
Peace Award by the Quaker group Promoting Enduring Peace.

A concurrent resolution that he introduced in 2010 would have required Obama to
withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The House rejected it 356 to 65. It was based on
the War Powers Resolution, which permits such a vote when U.S. forces are in a conflict
unauthorized by Congress. In 2011 the congressman condemned Obama’s intervention in
Libya and called the president’s war-making without congressional permission
unconstitutional and impeachable.

He lost reelection in 2012 after the Ohio State Legislature adjusted congressional
districts and placed Kucinich in a contest with the long-time Democratic representative
Marcy Kaptur.

Kucinich was the son of a truck driver and the eldest of seven children. He attended
parochial schools and earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Case Western
Reserve University. His political career began in 1969 when he won a seat on the Cleveland
City Council at the age of only 23. In 1977, at 31, he was elected mayor of Cleveland. In
the wake of the steel industry’s decline and crushing effect on the city’s economy, he lost
reelection. But in 1994 he made a political comeback, getting elected to the state senate.
Two years later came his first election to Congress. Kucinich sought the Democratic
nomination for president in 2004 and 2008.